The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808), Volume I eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 384 pages of information about The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808), Volume I.

The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808), Volume I eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 384 pages of information about The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808), Volume I.

In this same year, Dr. Porteus, bishop of Chester, but now bishop of London, came forward as a new advocate for the natives of Africa.  The way in which he rendered them service, was by preaching a sermon in their behalf, before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.  Of the wide circulation of this sermon, I shall say something in another place, but much more of the enlightened and pious author of it, who from this time never failed to aid, at every opportunity, the cause, which he had so ably undertaken.

In the year 1784, Dr. Gregory produced his Essays Historical and Moral.  He took an opportunity of disseminating in these a circumstantial knowledge of the Slave-trade, and an equal abhorrence of it at the same time.  He explained the manner of procuring slaves in Africa; the treatment of them in the passage, (in which he mentioned the case of the ship Zong,) and the wicked and cruel treatment of them in the colonies.  He recited and refuted also the various arguments adduced in defence of the trade.  He showed that it was destructive to our seamen.  He produced many weighty arguments also against the slavery itself.  He proposed clauses for an act of parliament for the abolition of both; showing the good both to England and her colonies from such a measure, and that a trade might be substituted in Africa, in various articles, for that which he proposed to suppress.  By means of the diffusion of light like this, both of a moral and political nature, Dr. Gregory is entitled to be ranked among the benefactors to the African race.

In the same year, Gilbert Wakefield preached a sermon at Richmond in Surry, where, speaking of the people of this nation, he says, “Have we been as renowned for a liberal communication of our religion and our laws as for the possession of them?  Have we navigated and conquered to save, to civilize, and to instruct; or to oppress, to plunder, and to destroy?  Let India and Africa give the answer to these questions.  The one we have exhausted of her wealth and her inhabitants by violence, by famine, and by every species of tyranny and murder.  The children of the other we daily carry from off the land of their nativity, like sheep to the slaughter, to return no more.  We tear them from every object of their affection, or, sad alternative, drag them together to the horrors of a mutual servitude!  We keep them in the profoundest ignorance.  We gall them in a tenfold chain, with an unrelenting spirit of barbarity, inconceivable to all but the spectators of it, unexampled among former ages and other nations, and unrecorded even in the bloody registers of heathen persecution.  Such is the conduct of us enlightened Englishmen, reformed Christian.  Thus have we profited by our superior advantages, by the favour of God, by the doctrines and example of a meek and lowly Saviour.  Will not the blessings which we have abused loudly testify against us?  Will not the blood which we have shed cry from the ground for vengeance upon our sins?”

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The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808), Volume I from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.